EL PAÍS offers the América Futura section openly for its daily and global information contribution on sustainable development. If you want to support our journalism, subscribe here.
Something in Mrs. Teresa Mejía's eyes went dark when she found out that her granddaughter Dianny Mateo Mora, then 14 years old, was going to be a mother. “We would have wanted her to study, to prepare, since we don't have a career,” she will whisper minutes later, when she can't hear her. Now, she watches her clumsily carry Dylan and searches for the sad, averted gaze of the one who was “the apple of her eye.” He looks at her as if he hasn't seen her before and shakes his head at her. Everything weighs too much in the Mejía house. It is not easy for Teresa to meet those eyes either, nor was it easy for her to meet her daughter. “I was a mother when I was 19, Pahola when I was 15. And now she… It's as if they had repeated my story. We struggle with the same thing,” she laments in her modest ranch in Palenque, a rural municipality in the south of the Dominican Republic. Meanwhile, the little one's babbling is the only thing that breaks the silence in this house of resilient and caring women who did not choose to be.
“The same thing,” what Doña Teresa refers to, is gender violence, growing up alone, and people's gazes. In Dianny's case, there is also the addition of dropping out of school. One in five adolescents under 19 years of age is a mother in the Dominican Republic. And half of them leave school to give birth. In the case of this petite and shy young woman, it was because bullying of her companions. “I stopped going because they laughed at me,” she whispers in her small room where she sleeps with her siblings and now with her three-month-old son. In front of the two red bunk beds, she hangs all the family's clothes piled up on hangers hooked to the door frame. “They told me that she seemed so holy that how so I got pregnant. That's why I don't want to go out, I stay at home,” she adds. Two pairs of Dylan's shoes rest next to a nearly empty bottle of formula. Days ago, Dianny's 22-year-old boyfriend agreed to pick up the phone, but he doesn't answer the calls. “It will be in the capital, it will appear,” he predicts.
Although since 2021 there has been a law in the Caribbean country that prohibits child marriage and early unions, for Paula Avila-Guillen, executive director of the Women's Equality Center (WEC), there is still much to do to end the normalization of relationships of older men with girls: “There may be political will in the country to change things, but there is a lack of courage. “We lack the courage to bet on what is right, regardless of the consequences that this may bring.” And fighting for the rights of girls and women has only been on the agenda during pre-electoral periods, Avila laments. According to a Unicef study, the effective elimination of marriage and early unions could have reduced poverty at the national level from 30.5% to 27.7%; and from 41% to 32.1% in households where women married at an early age.
'Get rid'
It never occurred to any of the Mejías that Dianny would have an abortion. “The Bible clearly says that you shall not kill,” says Doña Teresa. It almost didn't even occur to them to name it. In the Dominican Republic, women do not talk about abortion, but about 'getting rid'. The taboo has a lot to do with the fact that the island is one of the five countries on the continent in which terminating a pregnancy is a crime, punishable by up to four to ten years in prison. The medical personnel who execute it could go between 5 and 20 years in prison. The absolute criminalization of abortion is also the norm in Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador and Haiti.
Although in these four countries the prohibition seems to be protected, the Dominican Republic is in the midst of a debate on updating the Penal Code, which is more than 140 years old. They have been advancing and repealing new versions for years, but none of them pass the filter. The main reason why the counter is reset to zero is the same: that in all the versions presented, the absolute penalty for abortion is maintained. That is, the interruption of pregnancy is sentenced to prison even when the mother's life is in danger, when the fetus is unviable or when it is the result of rape or incest. “This has been a victory for feminist groups,” she says. Syra Taveras, executive director of the Research Center for Women's Action (Cipaf). “In a 21st century Penal Code we cannot continue criminalizing women for having an abortion. “We will not let any project like this pass.”
The request to drag the country into a trend on the continent that is increasingly opening its hand to women's rights is not only a feminist demand. According to the 2019 Americas Barometer, 61% of Dominicans agree with abortion under the three exceptions. Therefore, this year can be a great opportunity for a country which saw 24,461 girls give birth in 2022. San Cristóbal, the rural municipality where Dianny lives, is the town where the most teenagers became mothers last year. Low enrollment rates, economic precariousness and the strong presence of religious beliefs are behind imposed maternities.
It is 8:00 in the morning in Palenque and it is impossible to extend the sleep of little Juriel, 11 months old. Her mother, Leissy Báez, 16, became pregnant by her boyfriend Gerardo Amaranto, 26, without planning it. For an hour now, like every day, a mass from the evangelical church next door has been playing at full volume. This one b
ears more resemblance to a concert hardcore that with a Eucharist. “The vipers leave when you have fire. The vipers leave when you have fire,” the priest repeats without stopping, accompanied by drums, bass and percussion. All with their eyes closed and possessed by the music. “This is like this all morning. Here you go to mass whether you want to or not,” says the mother, who estimates that in the five blocks of her neighborhood there are about twelve or thirteen more like these.
The deep-rooted conservatism positions in rural areas make the countryside a priority axis of the feminist movement. There, Lidia Ferrer and the colleagues of the National Confederation of Peasant Women (Conamuca) have spent four decades demanding the right to food sovereignty, to the land and to the needs of the women who work it. “We do work to socially decriminalize abortion in the communities; “We are dedicated to putting people in the shoes of these girls.” Feminism in the Dominican Republic would not be understood without them. “We do what the State has to do.”
Sexual education almost didn't touch Dianny. Although she remembers having “one or two” pregnancy prevention classes, her boyfriend told her that he did not want to have sex with a condom. She had no one to turn to or anyone to consult, she thought nothing would happen. Leissy, on the other hand, never heard of sexually transmitted diseases or contraceptives at school. She didn't hear it either before she was injected with hormones hours after giving birth.
“I asked the nurse what they were injecting my daughter with and they told me it was planning. At first, I was angry because these things are consulted, right? But then I thought that it would be better, not to bring more children now,” she says in the living room of her house, Leidy Pozo, mother of Leissy and three other children. When Leissy first heard that there are many other ways to plan, it was too late. “But is there one that doesn't make me gain weight like this one?” she asks.
Lilliam Fondeur, gynecologist, obstetrician and activist, knows that planning with flawed or null consent is no exception in her country. “It even happens with sterilization. Many women are sterilized and do not know that it is a permanent method of contraception. The decision of when to be mothers cannot be made by anyone other than themselves,” she says. According to the 2013 Demographic and Health Survey (Endesa), 41% of women in union or married are sterilized.
In the Dominican Republic, the sexual education law exists only on paper, as is the case with many women's rights. The conspiracy has also reached the island that talking about genitals, sexual rights and prevention of abuse of children and young people is part of the “gender ideology.” Thus, the few guidelines on sexual or reproductive health are usually permeated by the morality of the teacher or parents. One of the consequences of the lack of information is the very high neonatal mortality rate. For every 1,000 live births to teenage mothers, 22 children die before reaching 28 days of life. “A girl's body should not endure pregnancy or childbirth. They have to play, study and be a mother when and only if they want,” says Fondeur.
Avila adds to the equation the social gaps that criminalization opens: “Abortion is not prohibited for rich women. This happens in all countries with this context, but in the Dominican Republic, where this class gap is so large, it is much more serious.”
A hole as big as the one Dianny has in her stomach, when her mother and grandmother ask her to smile for the photo. It's Dylan's first time seeing the sea and the first time she's set foot on the beach since she gave birth. But the smile only comes out when she finds his father on a motorcycle with his stepmother. She runs out with the child in her arms and, for the first time that day, she looks like a girl again. She hugs him and leaves the baby for a while to play with him. His mother, who watches them from a restaurant on the shore, is afraid of what is to come. “He wants to hook to the girl [al servicio militar]. She doesn't know how to say no, she just wants to contribute a salary to the house. And I just want her to study again, to play with her friends again.”
#Grandmother #mother #daughter #teenage #pregnancy #passed #generation #generation
